m 




Gopight^i" 






COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PRAYER FOR PEACE 



BY WILLIAM SAMUEL lOHNSON 

GLAMOURIE. A ROMANCE OF PARIS 

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. A NOVEL 

PRAYER FOR PEACE AND OTHER POEMS 

AT ALL BOOKSELLERS 



PRAYER FOR PEACE 

AND OTHER POEMS 

BY 

WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON 



NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMXV 



COPYRIGHT, 191 5, BY 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 






PRINTED BY VAIL'BALLOU COMPANY 
BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK 



JUL 2 1915 

©CI.A401(J08 



f^-^t t 



To 
C. G. J. 

. . . And now 

(Completion of that earlier vow) 
With all my Over-Worldly Goods 

I thee endow: 
Found as w€ trod Westchester ways. 

Or fared by Sound and sea. 
Or lived through magic Paris days 

Her dreams of glamourie — 
The past/ our own to have and hold 

Whatever life may bring. 
Dust of the blest, symbolic gold 

Worn from thy wedding ring! 



Among the verses in this volume the following have 
been published: ** Prayer for Peace" in The Forum; 
" The Poor Little Guy " in the New York Sun; " Song 
from * Glamourie ' *' in that novel, published by Harper 
& Bros. ; ** The Egoist " in The New York Times; 
'' Strangers '' in The Rudder; '' The Pole " in the New 
York Herald, Paris Edition ; ** James Lewis " in Mun- 
sey*s Magazine; " The Lapidary " in The Atlantic 
Monthly; "The Pole" (sonnet) in The Pall Mall Ga- 
zette; '' Ballade of the Bather " in Smart Set; " Ballade 
of Neophobia " and '* Midsummer in New York " in 
Leslie's Illustrated Weekly; and a few poems in The 
Home Journal and Happenchance. The author is grate- 
ful for the permissions accorded him to include such verses 
in this collection. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



WAR POEMS 

PRAYER FOR PEACE 3 

THE POOR LITTLE GUY 6 

NOTRE-DAME DE RHEIMS 8 

BEYOND OUR WAR 9 

LIFE AND ART 

AROUND THE BEND 21 

SONG FROM "GLAMOURIF' 28 

THE WONDER-NET 30 

THE CURSING OF ART 32 

SHADOWS 36 

SPORE-DUST 37 

WILL AND FATE 43 

IN THE OFFING ■ 45 

VISION 49 

PRAYER 56 

THE FOLLOWER 51 

AURORA BOREALIS 53 

JESTER AND BAUBLE 54 

A LA SOIREE MUSICALE 58 

THE EGOIST 59 

THE MOTHER 61 

STRANGERS 64 

ART 66 

THE POLE 67 



CONTENTS 





PAGE 


QUOTH THE SKUNK-CABBAGE:— 


68 


MAGE MERLIN'S RULE 


^ 


MAN 


70 


EASTER 


71 


JAMES LEWIS 


72 


R. L. S. 


72^ 


PARIS DAYS 




THE BOOK 


77 


BY THE PONT NEUF 


82 


THE LUXEMBOURG GARDEN 


84 


THE LUXEMBOURG SPARROW 


86 


CHIFFONS ! 


89 


VILLANELLE OF THE COCHER 


91 


SONNETS 




THE LAPIDARY 


95 


BURROW AND WING 


96 


THE WASTRELS 


97 


THE PH^DO 


98 


THE POLE 


99 


THE LAST WORD 


100 


BALLADES 




BALLADE OF THE BATHER 


103 


BALLADE OF NEOPHOBIA 


105 


MIDSUMMER IN NEW YORK 


107 


BALLADE OF THE RHYME 


109 


THE WANDERING JEW 


III 


ENVOY: PATER NOSTER 


113 



WAR POEMS 



PRAYER FOR PEACE 

NOW these were visions in the night of war: 
I prayed for peace ; God, answering my prayer, 
Sent down a grievous plague on humankind, 
A black and tumorous plague that softly slew 
Till nations and their armies were no more — 

And there was perfect peace . . . 
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer. 

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer, 
Decreed the Truce of Life: — Wings in the sky 
Fluttered and fell ; the quick, bright ocean things 
Sank to the ooze; the footprints in the woods 
Vanished; the freed brute from the abattoir 
Starved on green pastures; and within the blood 
The death-work at the root of living ceased; 
And men gnawed clods and stones, blasphemed and 
died — 
And there was perfect peace . . . 
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer, 

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer, 
Bowed the free neck beneath a yoke of steel, 
Dumbed the free voice that springs in lyric speech. 
Killed the free art that glows on all mankind, 
And made one iron nation lord of earth. 
Which in the monstrous matrix of its will 

3 



4: PRAYER FOR PEACE 

Moulded a spawn of slaves. There was One Might- 

And there was perfect peace . . . 
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer. 

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer, 
Palsied all flesh with bitter fear of death. 
The shuddering slayers fled to town and field 
Beset with carrion visions, foul decay. 
And sickening taints of air that made the earth 
One charnel of the shrivelled lines of war. 
And through all flesh that omnipresent fear 
Became the strangling fingers of a hand 
That choked aspiring thought and brave belief 
And love of loveliness and selfless deed 
Till flesh was all, flesh wallowing, styed in fear, 
In festering fear that stank beyond the stars — 

And there was perfect peace . . . 
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer. 

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer, 
Spake very softly of forgotten things. 
Spake very softly old remembered words 
Sweet as young starlight. Rose to heaven again 
The mystic challenge of the Nazarene, 
That deathless affirmation : — Man in God 
And God in man willing the God to be . . . 
And there was war and peace, and peace and war, 



PRAYER FOR PEACE 

Full year and lean, joy, anguish, life and death, 

Doing their work on the evolving soul, 

The soul of man in God and God in man. 

For death is nothing in the sum of things, 

And life is nothing in the sum of things, 

And flesh is nothing in the sum of things. 

But man in God is all and God in man, 

Will merged in will, love immanent in love. 

Moving through visioned vistas to one goal — 

The goal of man in God and God in man. 

And of all life in God and God in life — 

The far fruition of our earthly prayer, 

** Thy will be done! "... There is no other peace! 



THE POOR LITTLE GUY 

WHILE the legions are locked on the dead line, 
While the dreadnoughts are glooming the seas, 
While horrors of rumor and headline 

Give a tang to an evening of ease. 
Let us kneel in the dust of all faction, 

Let us pray to the Peace from on high 
For a small, unspectacular fraction — 
The poor little guy! 

In the fangs of the tangling wire 

He slips in the slime of the dead ; 
He blinks at the spume of the fire 

And the scream of the stream of the lead; 
And yet — he knew nought of the plotting. 

And nought can he profit thereby; 
But his is the dying — and rotting — 

The poor little guy! 

Let us pray for his kine in the stable, 

For his ox and his ass and his swine, 
For his chair and his plate on the table. 

For his cornfield and orchard and vine. 
For the tilth where the women are plying. 

For the bed where he never shall lie. 
For the ache that is worse than the dying — 

The poor little guy! 

6 



THE POOR LITTLE GUY 

A pitiful pawn of Vienna, 

Of Kaiser, of King or of Czar, 
He is pushed to the pit of Gehenna, 

To the slide of the Great Abattoir. 
He goes as the wailing denial, 

As the infinite, travailing cry 
Of the Peace to be born from his trial — 

The poor little guy! 

The Peace of the pure consummation 

Foretold in the ages before 
When nation shall strive not with nation, 

Nor shall they learn war any more. 
But, Jesus! — the carrion faces 

That glare at the pestilent sky 
And the trench at the foot of the glacis — 

The poor little guy! 



NOTRE^DAME DE RHEIMS 

CRY not on God to launch the curse of Cain! 
But mid these wrecks of dreams, dear worships 
prone, 
Blind shattered lights, and wonders overthrown, 
Relearn this gospel : — '* Since all hates are vain, — 
Since, as we know, the slain man is not slain, — 
Since, as we trust, love cannot lose its own, — 
So shall this martyred thing, fair stone by stone, 
Bright shard by shard, receive our souls again. 

" No Dream shall die ! — nor shall one gleam thereof 
In death's mirage of wonder wane to less. 

Nor vision of the sea or sky or sod. 
Nor art, in sacramental loveliness. 
Willed thither by man's immemorial love. 

Fade from the over-world of beauty's God ! " 



BEYOND OUR WAR 

GOD prosper them that read! A dream may cast 
Wan shadows of the truth; and words may cast 
Wan shadows of the dream. God prosper all 
That read the words ! — 

Around the crystal sphere — 
That sphere so fashioned of the core of light, 
So lucent from the turning wheel of law, 
That spirits, visioning in its mystic deeps. 
See there no images of world or flesh 
But symbols only, shapes that show perchance 
(Perchance, indeed; for can a dreamer know?) 
How the mirage called life, seen ghost to ghost, 
May loom as God — 

Around the crystal sphere 
Huddled the Parcae, whom the ancient books 
Make daughters of dark Erebus and Nox, — 
Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos; 
Symbols they too perchance (but who can know?) 
Of That which comes and strives and goes again, 
Whose thread they seem to hold and spin and shear; 
And thus within the dream they spake and sang : — 



^^ Lay down thy distaff, 

Clotho/ Clotho/ 
Thine are the Eyes of Birth 
9 



lo BEYOND OUR WAR 

Love a-winging on its quest, 

That is I — 
Lov^ a-mating, dawn caressed 

In the sky; 
Love a-brooding; marriage nest: 

Lullaby! 

^' Lay down thy distaff, 

Clothof Clothof 
Thine are the Eyes of Birth . . /^ 

Wonder-womb of all unrest, 

That is I — 
Lo! the Word made manifest 

Drawing nigh; 
Baby mouth to mother breast: 

Lullaby! 

^^ Lay down thy distaff, 

Clothof Clothof 
Thine are the Eyes of Birth 
Visioning That which comes: 
Gaze in the crystal sphere, 

Clothof Clothof" 

I vision That which comes! The very Light, 
Self-shattered, breaks into a spray of suns 
And stars and dust of stars! The very Joy, 
Self-shattered to a mist of dear desires. 



BEYOND OUR WAR ii 

Hungers and lusts, worships and wonderings, 

Yearns through the universe! The very Life, 

Self-shattered into births innumerable, 

Blows through the great illusions Space and Time 

As blow the spores of fungus and seeds of fern 

On fecund tilth. And lo! in Space and Time, 

Aflame with the vast dawn of That which comes, 

God reaps the harvest of His gift of Self! — 

All gladnesses of travail and desire, 

All loverhood that lives its miracle, 

All fatherhood that passions and creates. 

All motherhood astir with the unborn. 

Send to the One, the Light and Joy and Life, 

Dawn, Love and Birth for harvest . . . This I see; 

The rest is dark ... I take again my distaff. 

Wonder-womb and wonder-guest, 

That is I — 
Wonder- Word whose love-behest 

Sends on high 
God the nestling, God the nest: 

Lullaby! 

II 

*' Lay down thy spindle, 

LachesisI Lachesis! 
Thine are the Eyes of Life . . .'' 



12 BEYOND OUR WAR 

Mine eyes are bleared with battle smoke, 

Mine eyes are blind with tears, 
Watching the wars of evil folk 

Through hate's unending years. 
Man's thunders blur the reeling sun; 

His life-blood stains the sod; 
I cannot dream them back to One, 

These shattered lights of God. 
Within the span since time began 

I cannot weigh its worth, 
This pullulating spawn of man 

That fouls the rotting earth . . . 

'^ Lay down thy spindle, 

LachesisI Lachesis! 
Thine are the Eyes of Life 
Visioning That which strives: 
Gaze in the crystal sphere, 

Lachesis! Lachesis! " 

Mine are the Eyes of Life! From dream to dream, 
The mirrored miracles of the crystal sphere, 
I vision That which strives: light against light, 
Joy against joy, en woven, intermeshed. 
Life against life, a tapestry of pain 
And sin and shadow . . . Ah! my lives of men. 
The lives I spin — Alas ! Alas ! my sisters . . . 



BEYOND OUR WAR 13 

'' Thine are the Eyes of Life 
Visioning That which strives: 
Gaze in the crystal sphere, 
Lachesis! Lachesis! " 

I vision That which strives : I see the earth 
As an alembic fuming above strange fires, 
Red lusts, wan aspirations, sanctities, 
And loves and hates, fuming quintessences 
Of pain and strife. As bubbles they rise and break, 
And lo! their vapours, ghost with very ghost, 
Mix with the breathings of infinity — 
A miracle, my sisters, a miracle! 
For That which suffers is the Joy of God 
Forever widening and quickening; 
And That which strives is but the Peace of God 
That passeth understanding . . . 

As bubbles they rise. 
The works and wars and wonders of the world; 
And in the verity of the crystal sphere 
They show as worship. Mine are the Eyes of Life! 
I see it all — and Life is worship only ! 
The bubbles rise and break in incense fumes; 

And each is worship only — 

The marble pants with art's immortal breath; 
Ascetic vision hunger-dreams to death; 



14 BEYOND OUR WAR 

The clutching talon and the rending claw 
Act the red ritual of evolving law: 
And each js worship only — 

I see the chestnut glaze its winter bud, 
Atom slay atom in the fevered blood, 
An earthworm draw a leaf beneath the sod, 
A poet love his failure up to God: 
And each is worship only — 

Song of the bacchic frenzy of the grape; 
Truth clattered from the bones of man and ape; 
The will that flames its word from shore to shore; 
The wing that spires through the clouds of war: 
And each is worship only — 

And millions, throbbing with the throbbing drum. 
Hear the Great Call; and millions yet to come 
Shall follow by the chamel road of strife 
Through hate to love, through passionate death to life: 
And this is worship only . . . 

Fume, great alembic, fume! Mine eyes are blind. 
Blind with the vapours of the Joys of God, — 
The distillation of all lusts and fears. 
The sublimation of all hates and pains. 
All triumphs, all frustrations, to one love. 
One will, one peace ... I take again my spindle. 



BEYOND OUR WAR 15 

III 

^^ Lay down thy shears, 

Atroposl Atropos! 
Thine are the Eyes of Death . . /' 

Thunder of the cannon and the calling of the drum; 
For the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! 

And nothing else I hear 

As I shear, shear, shear. 
And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! 
Drum! Drum! Hallelujah of the drum, 
When the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! 

"Lay down thy shears, 

Atropos! Atroposl 
Thine are the Eyes of Death . . /' 

Famine, plague and earthquake fill the fateful sum; 
For the Spirit and the Bride say. Come! 

And love has done with fear 

As I shear, shear, shear. 
And the Spirit and the Bride say. Come! 
Drum ! Drum ! Paternoster of the drum. 
When the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! 

" Lay down thy shears, 
Atropos! Atropos! 



i6 BEYOND OUR WAR 

Thine are the Eyes of Death 
Visioning That which goes: 
Gaze in the crystal sphere^ 
Atropos! AtroposI " 

I vision That which goes: ineffable Self, 

Groping in shadow, netted by desire, 

Winging by will above the lust of life, 

The mire of flesh. Pure in the crystal sphere 

I see the souls of men and women rise. 

And spirits of herb and tree and creeping things 

And beast and bird — ay ! and the yeasty spawn 

That fires the generous wine, and that which cleans 

The bones of the charnel. Mine are the Eyes of Death 

That see the invulnerable spirit of the will 

Slip radiant through my shears ! The will is all ! — 

The will that lives mid broken gleams and lusts 

And works that will therein; the will that wins 

Large light and loves and worships, and so fares 

Back to the Self ... I take my shears again . . . 

Sisters, to our spinning, hooded, veiled and dumb; 
For the Spirit and the Bride say. Come! 

And the truth grows wondrous clear 

As I shear, shear, shear. 
And the Spirit and the Bride say. Come! 



BEYOND OUR WAR 17 

Drum! Drum! Revelation of the drum, 
When the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! 

And Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, 
Veiled, hooded, dumb, around the crystal sphere 
Sat huddled, spinning out the lives of men . . . 



LIFE AND ART 



AROUND THE BEND 

AH, doctor, it IS kind to come so far 
To cheer a dying man. You cannot help; 
Yet I am glad you came: I want to talk. 
And you, because your blood is French like mine, 
Will understand: you will not laugh at me! 

So you have come to take your uncle's place. 
Fresh from your studies at the grey Sorbonne? — 
That's as it should be! You must marry here 
And rear your babes and keep the breed alive. 
That generous race, well scented with the past! 

Your forebears and my own, pale Huguenots, 
Came here when Louis and his grim Louvois 
Drove them from old Rochelle. Westward they sailed 
(The sunsets promised freedom in those days!) 
Bearing the name — it sang of France to them — 
To plant it new on this Westchester shore : 
*' The Sound,'' said they, ** shall be our lost Pertuis; 
Long Island there, our Re and Oleron." 

Stark pilgrims they! who suffered for their faith 
That we, their sons, might give free minds to doubt — 
Why, there's a marble thing not far away, 
A block all graved with lapidary praise 
Of brave Tom Paine, built on their brave belief! 

Your stethoscope? — Why, surely! You will hear 
Three whispering deaths caged in these ribs of mine: 

21 



22 AROUND THE BEND 

The lungs like colour-tubes squeezed nearly flat; 
The arteries as frail as frozen stubble; 
And, worst of all, grown louder year by year, 
That long Greek name that frets my heart away! . 

No; speak the truth! let people say of you 
(You are but young here: it will help your fame), 
" He prophesied the death of poor Quantein ; 
And poor Quantein was dead within the hour." 

Lie down ? — No, doctor ; I shall roam about 
Here in my studio. I want to talk: 
I have been silent always. Now my heart, 
Despite that long Greek name, is like a boy's; 
And I must chatter, boylike. Do not speak — 
This hour is mine! till I can speak no more. 

Look at the sketch upon the easel there ! — 
By that you guess my trade — an artist. Yes; 
I sometimes think I am an artist. I, 
Who never breathed the air of Barbizon 
Or learnt the jargon of the studios, — 
I, who at home browse on where I was born, 
Travail with pigment, brush, thumb, knife, to paint 
The world I see! Yes; and the mood, the soul, 
With which I see — and God behind the husk ! 

Your pardon, sir ! but when I talk of art, 



AROUND THE BEND 23 

Shy, perfumed words, such as the poets use, 
Flower, exotics, in my homely speech. 

No one will buy my daubs when they are done ; 
But what of that? How could I sell my world. 
My green, prophetic world, haloed with light. 
Glad with the gospel of the wind and sun? 
What! set my soul for hucksters to appraise: 
So much old faith a little worn in the use, 
So much new vision flashing through the flesh. 
So much of love and failure, sin and sloth. 
Thrown on their rotting midden-heap of art? 
What! paint for God and sell my Thought of Him? — 
Not while I still can plant roots in the soil 
And mart the increase! 

Men have seen my works, 
Great critics, who have spun a web of words. 
Deft, delicate, all silky, facile phrase. 
Until I could not find myself beneath. 
"Unschooled,'' they write, "the horny peasant-touch; 
Vet with a patient, dumb, alluring way 
Of hinting ghost within the rind of things ; — 
His granite, woods and fields are but mirage." 

God knows if this be true : I only know 
That I must do this thing with all my soul ; 
And, having done it, show my work to God 



24 AROUND THE BEND 

(My only prayer or creed!) ; and, that achieved, 
Stretch a new canvas and to work again. 

So much for me ! — Now to my sketch : I stand 
Before the chaos on the canvas. Thus, 
In the beginning, did Jehovah muse, 
As Hebrew legends limn Him to our eyes, 
Planning a universe! Yet He but wrought 
To knead Himself into the heart of things 
Working with Life and Light; while I, a man, 
Strive to show Him shining through husk and shell 
With coloured clay smeared on a bit of cloth. 

Of course I fail! but ah! what joy to stand 
On the white peak of failure such as mine, 
Hid in His clouds of all-comprehending love. 
I ask no happier heaven than thus to strive 
And thus to fail through all my lives to be . . . 

Not bad, my sketch ! — it smells of out o* doors ; 
A path, you see — More! (if my craft hold true) 
My path from life to light through shadowed death- 
A fancy — what the critic called " mirage " — 
My euthanasia — now you understand ! — 
A forest path, not straight, but curving thus 
To lure the eye and hint sweet things unseen — 
My mystic path! for just around the bend 
The happy deathward wanderer shall behold 



AROUND THE BEND 25 

(Or sense without beholding, blind with God) 
What shall I say? — a sacrament of light, 
Pulsating, vibrant, — limpid blood of light 
In a wan grail of sky. ... A task for me ! — 
Who only know this bleak Westchester here: 
Fields where the Great Drift let the boulders drop 
(They glow like opals when the sun is low) ; 
Woods where the iedged, grey granite, glacier-grooved. 
Juts up through bog and hill-side; streams that flow 
Roiling, to salt themselves in sedgy ooze, 
And silt new shallows on the shifting bars — 
That is my life, my world ! — I sometimes dream 
(It's the old France that honeys in my blood) 
I might have painted better had I seen 
The day break, dewy-pale, in Ville d'Avray, 
And heard the happy ghost of good Corot 
Laugh in the tree-tops! . . . 

But my work is here — 
Sun on my path! first shadow; then a gleam; 
Then, near the bend, glamour, a touch of doubt; 
And then — ah God! what lies around the bend? 
So that is planned. But see! my sun is wrong: 
Shall not the sun obey its lord's behest? 
I am the Joshua of this universe; 
And sun, I hurl you thus across the sky 
And fix you here (Why not, you miracle? 



26 AROUND THE BEND 

You soul of all the rainbows, gems and dews?) 
Thence shall your beauty drip from leaf to leaf 
And light my path with shattering spray, with spray 
Shattering again, misting with veil on veil 
The Light beyond. Dear God! if I could paint 
The smell of the steaming earth, the feel of the bark, 
The veery's song down reaches of the wind. 
That wistful, questing wind that flows and flows 
Around the bend ... 

What ails my hand, my eye? 
That Greek thing eats the dreams out of my heart 
And gnaws my heart-strings ! — Not to bed ! but here, 
Here at his canvas, as God's painter should, 
God*s painter dies doing his work. . . . My brush! 
My palette! Oh, it grows so clear, so clear: 
Give me but time, my Master, time! I paint 
The gospel of my art; and all for Thee! 
The Epiphany of light; and all for Thee! . . . 

So clear, so clear! Now down my path I go. 
Wafted by perfume and the wistful air; 
And sun and song brood over me like wings, 
Luring, embracing, leading, till at last 
I pass around the bend . . . 

I am Quantein! 
A painter when I lived on earth, a man 
Who loved the sunshine — that was all my creed! 



AROUND THE BEND 27 

Who worked and wondered — that was all my prayer ! 
Sunshine and work and wonder — that is all . . . 

Nay, friend; I need no help: I know the path — 
I feel the Light beat on my sightless eyes! 



SONG FROM "GLAMOURIE" 

4 4T SLEPT in the shade of a mountain pine; 

A And it lured my soul from me 
Till the god and the glow in this body of mine 

Were a-thrill in the life of the tree — 
Till the god and the fire of the world^s desire 

Were meshed in the branches streaming 
And prisoned apart in the great tree's heart," 

Said Love in the shadow, dreaming. 

" Sing and swing in the heather-wind ! 

Crash and lash in the mistral-blast! 
O god that suffered, O god that sinned, 

You are shriven and pure at last — 
Lord alone of the ripening cone, 

Tender and brown and teeming. 
You scatter and hold the pollen-gold," 

Said Love in the shadow, dreaming. 

" Grow and glow in the clasping sun ! 

Drowse and dream as the valleys fade! 
O Light ! O Love ! — not twain but one 

In the balm of the scented shade ; 
Not twain but one when the dream is done 

And I rise on pinions gleaming 
To the higher Height and the larger Light," 

Said Love in the shadow, dreaming. 
28 



SONG FROM " GLAMOVRIE " 29 

" I am nourished by Earth as a thing divine, 

And her mother-might is streaming 
All a-thrill through my soul in the great, green pine/* 

Said Love in the shadow, dreaming. 
" But at last I shall wake for my kingdom's sake, 

And rule for the world's redeeming 
In the glamour and gleam of the Over-Dream," 

Said Love in the shadow, dreaming. 



THE WONDER^NET 

WHAT did you get in your Wonder-net? 
What have you caught? 
Only a Thing with a voice and a wing: 
Only a Thought. 

You? — Have you sought it. Poet, or wrought it. 

Filched it or bought it, this Thing divine? 
The Great Thinker thought it: the sun and wind 

brought it 
And wafted it nearer, till clearer and dearer, 
At last I have caught it 
And call it mine! 

Poet, you get in your Wonder-net 

Naught but your Art! 
Nay; 'tis a dream and a glow and a gleam 

And a song in the heart. 

Earth has denied it; Chaucer descried it; 

Shakespeare espied it, this Thought divine: 
Afrits have fought it; teraphs have taught it, 
And sages and mages for ages and ages; 

But I, I have caught it 
And call it mine! 

Man, it will fret in your Wonder-net, 
Rhymed and besungi 

30 



THE JVONDER'NET 31 

Nay; for it bides through all times and all tides 
Glowing and young: 

Love-glamour fills it; life-glamour thrills it; 

The Great Thinker wills it to use divine; 
And man, on its showing, moth-mad for its glowing, 
Forever and ever, but clasping it never, 

Shall follow unknowing 
This Thought of mine! 



A' 



THE CURSING OF ART 

ND the Lord {hear the Curse, little brothers!) 
Flung Adam, a palsy of fears, 
Tossed Eve, an alembic of tears, 
All bare and forlore on the Euxine shore 
And thundered the Doom in their ears. 
On them and their Seed {meaning Us, little brothers!) 
Their Dream and their Deed {meaning Ours, little 
brothers!) 
To the end of aeonian years. 

{Hear the Curse!) 



Thus cursed He the Music-Folk: 

" Shy lilts of the jingling shingle. 

Fierce fugues of the furrowing sea — 
Ye shall melt in their music and mingle 

With all that sings skyward to Me, — 
With the honeying wings in the flower, 

The psalm of the clustering swarm, 
The tink of the timbreling shower. 

The shawms of the shattering storm . . . 
But your Name {hear the Curse!) it is Silence- 

Forever to ache and sting 
As ye pipe and thrum for the song to come 

The Dream ye shall fail to sing! " 



32 



THE CURSING OF ART 33 

Yet (ah I did He jest, little brothers?) 

It is lightly you reck or rue. 
With your reed and string and the Joy of the thing. 
And the footlights' flare and the brasses' blare. 
And your baton aflash o'er the music's crash. 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse 

And the Work you were born to do; 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse, 

Gods by the Work you do! 

II 
Thus cursed He the Painter-Folk: 

" Where the Heights and the Lights clash together, 

Where Man and My Makings are one, 
Ye shall brother the hill and the heather, 

Ye shall sister the cloud and the sun ; — 
In the lordship of vision and rapture, 

Of the earth and the sea and the sky. 
Ye shall fare in your might to their capture. 

Moth-mad with the lust of the eye . . . 
But your Name {hear the Curse!) it is Darkness — 

Forever to taint and faint 
As ye seek in the muck of your colour-truck 

For the Dream ye shall fail to paint ! " 

Yet (ah! did He jest, little brothers?) 
It is devil a doom to you. 



34 THE CURSING OF ART 

With your brushes and oil and the panting toilj 
And your palette ablaze with the procreant clays. 
And your canvas aglow with the magic you know. 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse 

And the Work you were born to do; 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse, 

Gods by the Work you do! 

Ill 
Thus cursed He the Poet-Folk: 

" Earth and Ocean — the Husk of My Being — 

And the Rind, tingling grey, of your brain. 
And the dream- threads Fve twined 'twixt the Husk and 
the Rind, — 

Mid these seek ye Eden again! 
With the Words that your wizards shall fashion 

Ye shall grope for the secret thereof, 
Athrob with the pulse of the passion 

That glows in the grail of your love . . . 
But your Name {hear the Curse!) it is Madness — 

Forever, in reason*s despite, 
To quest in the dusk *twixt the Rind and the Husk 

For the Dream ye shall fail to write ! " 

Yet (ah! did He jest, little brothers?) 
Though feeble you are and few. 



THE CURSING OF ART 35 

You have whispered the Dream to the Lords of Steam, 
You have babbled your rhym€ to the Masters of Time, 

And well have they wrought for you! — 
Till you wield the stress of the storming Press 
And the Word flashed free from the crackling key 

That is shaping His world anew; 
And you thread the mesh 'twixt the Ghost and the Flesh 
And follow the gleam of the epic Dream 

To the Gate where His light shines through. 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse 

And the Work you were born to do; 
As you cleave to the Curse for better or worse, 

Gods by the Work you do! 

ENVOY 

Amen! (you have heard, little brothers!) 

Amen! for the Dream is the True! 
You are babes at nurse at the breast of the Curse 

And Gods by the Work you do! 



SHADOWS 

SHADES mid the hyacinth shadows we, 
Where the shattered scarps arise; 
And the sun-amber drips from crag and tree 
As the earth-light melts and dies. 

The Stygian reaches roll behind, 

A-fume in the molten glow, 
As we quest for the love that the dead may find 

In the violet combes below. 

So down where the mantling coppice lies 

We move in the amber air 
While the hearts-ease warms in your homing eyes 

And the glamourie glows in your hair. 

Till the amber and violet blend and wed 
In the bosks of the Valley of Love — 

It is You and I ! in the dusks of the dead 
As once in the dawns above! 



36 



SPORE-DUST 



SPORE-DUST! Spore-dust! 
Pale, fungoid caps from quick putrescence thrust, 
Dropping from pendant gills 

Spores innumerable — 
The great globe-fungus, 
Darkening, withering, bursting, 
Puffing to the wafting air 

Spores innumerable — 
The mobile earth-star. 
Rending its roots in death 
Out of the sod that bore it, 
Rolling before the wind and scattering 

Spores innumerable- — 
The ferns of rock, swamp, roadside. 
Tree-like, lace-like, hair-like, hand-like. 
Waving to every breeze 

Spores innumerable — 
Mad, mad whirl of the spore-dust! 
Buoyant in surging gyrations, 
Mystic with forces potential. 
Race-life, promise, prophecy. 
Fecund, puissant, deathless, 
Sown by God's law and ripening as it must — 

Spore-dust! Spore-dust! 



37 



38 SPORE'DUST 

II 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 
The wrinkles in our earth's tormented crust 
Tell of her chrism of fire, 
Tell of the dance of the star-whirl 
(YggdrasiPs pollen omnific) 
Tossed on the gales of the cosmos, 
Spun through the ether of godhead, 
Bearing, nursing, hoarding. 
Husked in the heart of its fire, 

Life! 
Life to be sown in the deserts of God, 

Mystical, tender, divine, august. 
Life of the heath and the heart and the clod, 

Dust of the dance of the stars. 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 

Ill 

Life! 

Just the sensual, glowing life, 
The thrill of the tingling nerves, 
The divine intimacies of Nature! 

Life! 
The feel of the grip of the spade 
As it grides through the earth; 
The feel of a handful of loam, 



SPORE'DUST 39 

Root-threaded and humid ; 
The feel of the bark of the maple 
And the deep-felted mosses; 
The sting of the naked plunge 
In the chill of the salt wave; 
The magic of hand grasping hand, 
The passion of Up pressing lip — 

Love! 
Just the sensual, natural love, 
Beast-love, bird-love, fish-love, 
Insect-love, flower-love — 
How it goes throbbing and longing. 
Hungry, insatiable, restless. 
Hinting, alluring, blinding, 
Procrcant, teemful, immortal! 

Love ! — 
The bee in the clasp of the orchid. 
The pollen that waited its coming, 
The bird in its plumage of passion; 
In all beasts the unquenchable fire. 
And in man the creative desire 
That leaps to the high, the higher. 
The union infinite. 
The deathless race — 
O passionate, tempestuous, savage lust! 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 



40 SPORE-DUST 



IV 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 
Wilder, fiercer, 
Spins the mad germ-dance! 
Spirits sweep on through the 

Storm-wind of time, 
Brute-spirit, man-spirit, 
Angel, archangel. 
Seeds of far aeons 

Unending, sublime — 
Shakespeare and Goethe; 
Poet and prophet; 
Cultus and credo; 

Symbol and rite; 
Buddha and Jesus; 
Islam and Iran; 
Gropers and yearners; 

Seekers for light; 
Songs of the martyrs 
Heard in the flame-roar; 
Gibbet and shambles 

Staining the sod; 
Agony's ''Eli, 
Lama sabachthani? " 
Nature in travail 

Moaning to God; 



SPORE-DUST 41 

Dreams of Apocalypse; 
Glow of the mystic; 
Moses, Spinoza, 

Mohammed and Paul : — 
Are swept up together 
In vortex and whirlwind 
And gathered and scattered 

By the Soul of the All: 
Caught up by the Time-Ghost, 
Storm-whirled through the Cosmos, 
Rapture and misery. 

Just and unjust, 
Falling to fertilize. 
Pregnant and potent. 
Awful Futurities — 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 



What of the Future, 
Seer of Visions? 
What of the Ultimate, 

Dreamer of Dreams? — 
Shall not the spore-dust, 
Thought-dust, soul-dust. 
Blown to the God-light, 

Grow in its beams? — 
Grow till its nerve-threads, 



42 SPORE'DUST 

Meshing the Infinite, 
Feel the EternaFs 

Ecstasy thrill 
Life! for its living — 
Love! for its loving — 
Birth! for its bearing — 

Will! for its will? 

Man! Man! Man! 

Through thee creation^s 
Travail and mystery 
Surge sempiternally ! 

Grow! 

Grow, as thou must, 
One with the All-Soul, 
Nerve of His love-life, 
Godhead Consummate — 

Spore-dust ! Spore-dust ! 



D 



WILL AND FATE 

(Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) 
Alle^^ro con brio. 

,ESTINY knocks! — 

Let her knock or be still: 
I reck not, who lie 

On the heath on the hill : — 
For God is — and I am — 
And I will! 

Andante con moto, 

God, I battled with Fate 

With the sword of the Will ! 
Let none mock me in death. 

Who feel, lying still. 
The bird-song and sun-glow 

That throb through the chill 
Of the clods of my grave 

Mid the heath on the hill, 
My grave of defeat 

Mid the heath on the hill. 



Allegro. 



And behold! I awake, 
I quicken and thrill! 

I awake, I larise 
To lead, to fulfill 
43 



44 WILL AND FATE 

The lost hope of the world 
In its battle with ill! . . . 

I have burst the grave clods: 

Black death cannot bind me! 
Hear the song of the host 

As it surges behind me ! — 
My crest is a wisp 

Of the heath on the hill; 
And the great world is mine 

For the battle with ill; 
I have drunken in death 

The strong God-wine of Will, 
And God is — and I am — 

And We will! 



IN THE OFFING 

The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very 
love of God ivherehy God loves himself, not in so far as he is 
infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence 
of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity; in 
other vjords, the intellectual love of the mind tovuards God is 
part of the infinite love, vjherevnth God loves himself. 

The Ethics of Spinoza. 



THE River? ... I shall take the helm, dear Friend, 
And Thou shalt see its wonders. Thou shalt 
dream. 
And dreaming sing, with none but me to hear, 
Mid the black alders of the haunted stream, 
Its glamour and its witchery and its fear, 
Beloved, to the end. 

yEons of waiting for Thy flashing sail ! 

Here in the offing I have watched alone 

While the Great Glacier carved the granite shore 

And grooved our River! I have seen the stone 

Naked and lifeless, waiting evermore 

For Thee — Who couldst not fail! 

Sjons of waiting for Thy lilted song! 
For Thee, Beloved ! — while the barren strand 
Grew filmy-ferned and green with herb and tree. 
And our strange River out of sea and land 

45 



46 IN THE OFFING 

Stored up its mystic meanings — all for Thee! 
Lx)ve, I have waited long! 

II 

Meanings! . . . Sing me the meanings that inform 

The osiers and the alders and the grass, 

The lily-pad, the bulrush and the briar, 

And yon dry flakes of cloud that whirl and pass 

Like gray, blown ashes from a hero's pyre, 

Waifs from wild realms of storm! 

Sing me the oozing flats; the seaweed's gold 
Stretched tiger-tawny on the dripping ledge; 
The steaming marsh, the redwing's land of peace. 
Sing me the wind that stamps the swirling sedge, 
The barking wind that herds the huddling fleece 
Down to the sunset's fold. 

Sing me the ford; the hoofs that print the mire; 
The boggy w^allows where the peepers cry; 
The tangled rips where talking waters run. 
Sing me the boulders! — etched and worn they lie, 
Old glacier-toys, new playthings of the sun, 
Great opals veined with fire. 

Sing me the sunshine! Sing the litten deep; 
The shimmering hollow of the housing sky 



IN THE OFFING 47 

That roofs out maddening space with homely light. 
Sing me the darkness! Sing the stars on high, 
The stars that lamp the avenues of night, 
The wind-paved walks of sleep. 

Sing me the blood of life! Sap in the tree! 

The throb and glow and sacramental fire 

That thrills through flesh and all we know and feel, — 

The pulse and passion of Divine Desire 

That warms the panting sea beneath our keel. 

The granite 'neath the sea! 

Ill 

My pilotage? . . . Thy song, a kingly fee, 

I claim by right of knowledge; by this hand 

Wise in the warmth and weight of earth; these eyes 

Learned in the beauties of my river-land. 

My voiceful sea, my brooding over-skies; 

And by my gifts to Thee — 

Great gifts. Beloved ! — for Thy pilot brings 

A wonder-consecrated, human heart 

Witched with the glamour of this magic shell 

(Unknown to Thee!) on which he dwells apart 

Childlike amid illusions, loving well 

The phantom husk of things! 



48 IN THE OFFING 

Lo, I am only man! a quivering clod, 
A shred of life, a filament of love! 
Yet high co-doer in Thy cosmic plan 
And high co-sharer in the joys thereof — 
For living is Thy holy gift to man, 
Beauty, man's gift to God! ... 

. . . Again the years flash by us, gleam by gleam! 
The ghostly offing widens evermore 
Out to the Infinite, — where renewed and strong 
I sail with Thee, bound for no earthly shore. 
Yet hear the earth-born meanings of Thy song 
Thrill through my wonder-dream! 



VISION 

HEELS pressed to haunches, knees to sunken chest, 
Back-hunched against a willow's wrinkled bole, 
The Jester watched the wild sun whirling west 
And held wrapt commerce with his laughing soul: 

"Sun-kiss and wind-kiss (O Mother-Earth so fair!) 
Life-wave and love-wave (O Spirit warm and fond!) 

And gleam and dream and fragrance everywhere. 
And glimmering vistas of the Great Beyond. 

" O good, round leaf, green with dear thoughts of God ; 

O frail, fleet life that haunts yon humming pool; 
Wild woodland voices, many-bladed sod: 

Praise the High-Love, I am a happy fool! " 

A priest drew near, reading a pious scroll. 

The Jester danced to meet him o'er the lea, 
Singing, "O father, save thy book-bound soul! 

Dear father, take my bauble: learn of me! *' 



49 



PRAYER 

DEATH came with iceberg crash and foundering 
wreck, 
Choked gurglings in the hollows of the hold, 
Mad vermin shapes that shrieked across the deck, 
And blind mist, fold on fold. 

One howled, ** Great God, save Thou my life! O hear! ** 
One whispered, as he watched the crouching sea, 

" Cleanse Thou my soul from any taint of fear. 
While I come back to Thee.'' 

Both died — one yelping, clutching spume and floe. 
Brain-maddened by the fingers of the brine ; 

One melted through that sea-death, glow on glow, 
Back to the Life Divine. 



50 



THE FOLLOWER ^,, 

LAW? — perhaps! it little matters: 
Chance ? — perhaps ! but none can say : 
I am That which shapes and shatters 

Hollow shells of haunted clay. 
I am deaf to song and thunder; 

I am blind to star and gleam ; 
Yet I thrill and yearn and wonder 

While my Dreamers dream their dream: 
Waken! . . . from the yeasty wallow 

Writhe my husks of living clay; 
And I follow, follow, follow. 

Where my Dreamers lead the way! 

Love ? — perhaps ! life's procreant passion : 

Hate ? — perhaps ! life's hunger-strife : 
With these tools I carve and fashion 

Fairer, fiercer shells of life ; 
And the sacramental fire 

Burns the lust and rage thereof 
Till my Lovers' hearts aspire 

To the star-cold heights of love: 
Higher! . . . from the dusky hollow 

Climb my holier husks of clay; 
And I follow, follow, follow, 

Where my Lovers lead the way! 



SI 



52 THE FOLLOWER 

Clay? — perhaps! I have and hold it: 

Soul? — perhaps! but Mine no less: 
Clay or soul I mix and mould it 

To my shells of loveliness! 
Winged and wistful shall they leave me, 

Debonair and spirit-strong, 
While my Prophets singing weave me 

Miracles of mounting song: 
Godward! ... up as flies the swallow 

Fly my life-husks, soul or clay; 
And I follow, follow, follow, 

Where my Prophets lead the way! 



AURORA BOREALIS 

1 KNELT at midnight on the tender sod, 
Childlike, to hear some secret word of God ; 
When, lo! a murmur hummed from place to place, 
Glowed in the spring air, throbbed through starry space: 

** Our Love is drawing nigh : 
Be still, O Life, and wait for ecstasy ! " 

And so I waited, still . . . And everywhere 
A sense of Being grew in earth and air, 
A deepening wave of flowing life and love; 
And earth and air and all the life thereof 

Murmured from many lands: 
" He takes our World within His loving hands." 

Then fell I prone to hide wild heart and face 
Deep in the grasses of that holy place. 
And felt the soft, young blades grow warm and thrill. 
And heard once more that whisper strange and still: 

" O we supremely blest ! 
His loving lips have kissed our World to rest." 

Then, then I looked; and all the northern night 
Flashed with pale, trembling spires of pulsing light 
Set in a rose-flushed curve of tender flame — 
" His lips just touch the World," the murmur came; 

** His face is hidden now ; 
But see the crown that binds His glorious brow! " 

S3 



JESTER AND BAUBLE 

COME! Play that I am God for half an hour, 
Brooding in chaos on creation's plan 
(I am the Jester) 
And in the pure exuberance of power 

I shape you out of nothingness — a Man ! 
(You are my Bauble!) 

Yea, Master; I am Man and formed meseems 
Not in Thine image, I: I am a whim: 
I am a Bauble, — 
Girt round with beauty, dreaming mystic dreams, 
Handles s and footless, sight and hearing dim — 
Thou art a Jester! 

Man! Speak your dream; and call the speaking prayer 
To Me, the Infinite, above your ken, 
To me the Jester. 
Lay all your puppet hopes and fancies bare: 
Pray like a priest among his fellow men. 
My human bauble. 

Great Master, hear! I crave a scarlet hood 

With long flap-ears, gold-tipped with tinkling bell 
To prank Thy Bauble; 
And save from crack and check my well carved wood; 
And save me from the midden-heap of Hell, 
O fearsome Jester! 

54 



JESTER AND BAUBLE 55 

Now speak once more and this time as you ought, 
As might a sparklet to its parent-flame! 
I am the Jester 
And ask you for your deepest bauble-thought, 
Your bauble-memories of whence you came: 
You are My Bauble. 

Ah^ Master^ it is love and love and love! 

One prayer have I : here in Thy hand to rest. 
Thy humble Baubles- 
One hope have I : in mystic lands above 
To lend my laughter to the Cosmic Jest 
With Thee, the Jester. 

And I have memories. Master! — / am wood; 
The wood was tree; the tree was tiny seed 
(I am Thy Bauble) 
Seed, flower — sequence dimly understood- — 
Root somehow deep in Thy creative deed. 
Thyself, O Jester! 

Yet I myself, by will, I know not how. 

Shaped flower to seed and seed to mighty tree. 
Even I, the Bauble; 
And, being Thine, shaped some fantastic bough 
Into this motley Thing that speaks to Thee, 
Thy toy, O Jester! 



56 JESTER AND BAUBLE 

Eh, Bauble, an you can philosophise, 

Display your wisdom more concretely: Live 
For Me, the Jester, 
The life of man, compact of lust and lies. 
Which, merciful in omnipotence, I forgive 
My erring Bauble. 

Forgive? Nay; what I sow I surely reap. 
And from the garnered corn a draught distill 
(I am the Bauble) 
A potent spirit which when drained full deep 
Stings flamelike to the tangled roots of will 
(Thine art, O Jester!) 

And through the cycles of unending time 
Life after life I quaff this wine of deed. 
Still Thine, the Bauble, 
And bourgeon roselike in each matin prime 
And ripen with each death a richer seed. 
For Thee, O Jester! 

A richer seed! — that is a gracious thought! 

Who knows what Love's aeonian smile may bring 
The wistful Jester; 
But speak not this before the mincing Court, 
Nor in the tinsel presence of the King, 
And come, dear Bauble; 



JESTER AND BAUBLE 57 

Come; for we needs must play our laughing role: 
My trade holds little that men call divine: 
I am a Jester! 
Though you, methinks, might ape the human soul; 
Strange type of me; and though not wholly mine, 
You are my Bauble! 



A LA SOIREE MUSICALE 

I FOLLOWED the glance of his eyes, 
For a good man's example is strong. 
A priest was he, holy and wise: 
I followed the glance of his eyes 
And discovered (O joy and surprise!) 

The rosiest cheeks in the throng. 
I followed the glance of his eyes. 

For a good man's example is strong. 



58 



THE EGOIST 

I AM the Weathercock! Listen, good people: 
Listen to me! 
Proudly ye placed me here, high on my steeple, 
King of the air and prince of the sea! 

I am the lord of the winds that blow 

Round the compass and high and low: 

When I swing to the East, it blows from the East — 

I call and call 
Till the storm-rack drives o'er the moaning sand, 
And the rain-lash scourges the shivering land, 
And the good mast splits in the shrieking squall — 

And I did it all, I did it all! 

When I swing to the North, it blows from the North ■ 

I call and call 
Till it blears the lake with a film of ice. 
And whitens your Autumn paradise. 
And you trudge to church to your knees in the snow, 
Poor little people that flock below 
To worship me on my steeple tall: 

For I did it all, I did it all! 

When I swing to the West, it blows from the West- 

Hurrah, for my westing wind ! 
There is health and life for the world and his wife, 

When I feel in a rollicking mind. 

59 



6o THE EGOIST 

O, the steer is glad as he grides the earth 
With the share of the wallowing plow ; 

And the plowman dreams of the husking^s mirth, 
The shocks and the bursting mow. 

O, the wind is true to his master's call: 
For I did it all, I did it all! 

When I swing to the South, it blows from the South: 

And Tom stole a kiss from Prue; 
And Bob bussed Kate on her red, red mouth 

Because the south-wind blew! 
O, hearts grow kind in the warm south-wind 

With the boys and the girls at play; 
And many's the wedding that would not ha' been 

Had the wind blown a different way! 
Thus I hold the world in my gracious thrall : 

For I did it all, I did it all ! 



THE MOTHER 
(To O. P. G.) 

WHEN the Lord (this isn't scripture, but it's true 
because it happened) 
Had His fish and beasts and man all started on their 
way 
With Eve and Adam naming things (love-making as 
they named 'em) 
The Lord w^alked in the Garden in the coolness of the 
day — 

And He looked upon creation; and behold, it all was 
good ! 
— " Good is good ; but best is better," said the Lord in 
discontent — 
** There is something lacking, lacking in this Eden of my 
making — 
" Let me think it out in heaven," said the Lord, and 
turned and went. 

And the year went by in Eden while the Lord was think- 
ing, thinking. 
Thinking how to make the better from the good that 
He had wrought; 
And at last (this isn't scripture, but it's true because it 
happened) 
The Lord came back to Eden as an aid to further 
thought. 

6i 



62 THE MOTHER 

There were nests in all the branches! There were bur- 
rows in the sand-hills! 
There were young things in the warrens, the copse, the 
sea, the air! 

And Eve was watching something with a smile of bene- 
diction — 

— It was mother ! mother ! mother ! that the Lord saw 

everywhere. 

And the Lord (this isn't scripture, but it's true because 
it happened) 
Said with joy, '* My good is better in a way I did not 
plan: 
Here is mother! there is mother! Mother Eve and 
mother sparrow — 
Good! I give unto the Mother the rule of earth 
and man 1 '* 

So the Mother (not in scripture, but it's true because it 

happened) 
Took the queenship from Jehovah; built the better on 

His will; 
Shaped the earth from Eden onward; made the Home 

and wrought the Empire — 

— And it's mother ! mother ! mother ! working upward, 

toiling still. 



THE MOTHER 63 

And she keeps the roof-tree o'er us ; — and she welds her 
brood together; — 
And she sends her loved ones from her when the Voices 
call away ; — 
And with heart-throb and with love-pang she makes the 
Lord's good better — 
— She is mother! mother! mother! as in Eden, here 
to-day. 

Though it isn't in the Scripture this is true because it 
happened ; 
And we follow, follow, follow as she guides us high 
and higher — 
— We her children's children's children (we who hap- 
pened when she happened) 
Follow, through the generations, to the goal of her 
desire. 



STRANGERS 

OITS side by side to the Beacon Hill 
^ (And a maid walks there with me!) 
But my Love, alas! is a stranger still, 

And a stranger still, the Sea! 
I have wooed the Sea as a sailor ought 

In the Norther's whelming breath, 
And a whisper caught of the word I sought 

In the joy of the Game with Death: 
But the Game with Death is played and won; 

Astern are the reefs of danger ; 
And in squall and calm, in fog and sun. 

My Sea is still a stranger! 

O, it's hand in hand to the Beacon Hill 

(And my sweetheart with me there!) 
But her wistful soul is questing still 

In a realm where I may not fare. 
I have wooed my Love as a sailor ought 

With the old, old songs of the sea, 
Till her lips were fraught with the word I sought, 

The gospel of life for me; 
But I see her listen, with eyes that glisten 

(Though it's hand in hand on the Beacon Hill) 
To voices near that I may not hear — 

My Love is a stranger still! 



64 



STRANGERS 65 

O, it's lip to lip on the Beacon Hill 

(And my Bride beside me there!) 
But she feels the passion and pulse and thrill 

Of a joy that I may not share. 
In death's despite, 'mid the shrieking night, 

I have won through the crashing Sea; 
I have heaved my lead 'mid the bones of the dead 

Till the drowned men wailed at me! 
In squall and thunder, with lee-rail under, 

I've dared the shoals of danger; 
But Death and the Dead no word have said — 

My Sea is still a stranger! 

O, it's heart to heart on the Beacon Hill 

(And my Wife is there with me!) 
But Love, alas! is a stranger still. 

And a stranger still, the Sea! 
O, wandering, wistful, alien Love! 

O, deathful, haunted Sea! 
Not the Dead below nor the Wonders above 

Can make you one with me: 
For the Woman looks seaward and dreams apart 

(Though I call her mine on the Beacon Hill) 
And her dreams are the dreams of the Sea's deep heart — 

My Love is a stranger still! 



ART 

\7n^ HAT joy to snare some thought that frets the brain 

And grind it, shrieking, to the pulp of verse; 
Then mould it back to throbbing life again — 

Our labour-tribute to the primal curse! 
What joy to know our own creative pain, 

Stinging through sky and sod. 
Fervent as love, shaking the stars above. 

Has power to move the echoing heart of God! 

For this is Art ! — to body forth and bind 

Some vague atomic spasm of the mind. 
Fill it with flaming life from core to rind ; 

Then hurl it, maddened, loosed from law and bond, 
Winged, quivering, singing, on a skyward wind, 

Through the white veil that hides the Great Beyond! 



66 



THE POLE 



THE Pole! — and what is it now you have gained it? 
It is Courage, O soul, 
Wrought of the iron of the race that attained it — 
That is the Pole! 



The Pole! — and what use to you now you have found it? 

It is Vision, O soul, 
Ringed with the bones of the dead all around it — 

That is the Pole! 

Mirage J desolation, ah, what is it worth? 

It is Country, O soul. 
Country ! — one flag on the top of the earth — 

That is the Pole! 



67 



QUOTH THE SKUNK-CABBAGE: — 

PUSHING through the thawing ooze, 
Through the sordid dregs of snow, 
Aixtnt-coureur, bearing news 
From below, — 

News of That whose fiat wills 
Death to life and dream to deed, 

Warms and quickens, wakes and thrills 
Root and seed, — 

Bids me thrust my tiny horn 

Up through silt and sand and snow, — 
I, the mark of human scorn. 

Humbly grow. 

Feeling in my herald heart. 

Robed in purple like a pall. 
That I play a wondrous part 

After all ; — 

For though but the sign and token 

Of the glories yet to be. 
Still — the Word of Life was spoken 

First to me! 



68 



MAGE MERLIN'S RULE 

BIG Things! Small Things! — 
And the Magic of Life, say I, 
Is the Magic that clings to the big, big things 
And lets the small go by. 

Fair Things ! Foul Things ! — 

And the Word of Life, say I, 
Is the Word that sings of the fair, fair things, 

And lets the foul things die. 

High Things ! Low Things ! — 

And the Faith of Life, say I, 
Is the Faith that wings to the high, high things 

And lets the low things lie. 

There's a Magic that is white and a Word that is 
clean 

And a Faith of Life that is true; 

And the Rule of Life for you 
Is to know them when you see them. 
And to win them when you know them. 
And not to be contented 

Till you do . . . 
And not to be contented 

When you do! 



69 



MAN 

SCEPTIC, atheist, darkener of death, 
Cynic, pessimist, loather of life — 
Yet a Harp, a Harp that the fluent Soul, 
The Soul of the Universe sings through . . . 

Shy, euphemistic, minter of phrase, 
Nice, dilettante, taster of art — 

Yet a Beast, a Beast that the shepherd Love, 
The Love of the Universe cares for . . . 

Scalpel, microscope, finger and eye, 
Acid, alembic, function and brain — 

Yet a Cloud, a Cloud that the mystic Light, 
The Light of the Universe glorifies . . . 

And this is Man — and you, alas! and I, 
Wing-broken wastrels, yearning for the sky! 



70 



EASTER 

DIM halcyon gleams of primal peace, 
Far flashes from the Sun-myth's rays, 
And beams from warm Olympian days 
When Hera waked the buds of Greece, 
Shine down the dying years to bring 
Light unto living hearts and show 
The immemorial throb and glow, 
The old divinity of Spring ! 



71 



JAMES LEWIS 

(Obiit 1896) 

T EWIS IS dead! The play is played at last, 
-■— ' The Prompter gently turns the final page, 
The name we loved is missing from the cast. 
And thou hast quit the stage. 

No more, dear Bottom^ with that swaggering stride, 
Through dim Athenian woods thy footsteps go, 

The place is vacant by Titanias side, — 
Dear Friend, we loved thee so! 

And nevermore in Arden's leafy dells 

Shall gibing Touchstone flout the gaping swain ; — 
Thy bauble rests beside the cap and bells 

That none can wear again. 

Thy bauble! Thou hast worn it undefiled; 

Blameless through life thy buskined feet have trod ; 
And he who wins the pure laugh of a child 

Must win the smile of God. 

Thy cap and bells ! Who strives must strive in vain 
To wag those symbols on a mocking head — 

Shakespeare can never make me laugh again : 
Lewis is dead! 



72 



R. L. S. 

THAE twa-three marks tak sma', sma* place; 
But wow! they set ane thinkin' 
O' stany ways to starry space 
Whaur Hltin* luve gaes linkinM 



73 



PARIS DAYS 



THE BOOK 

I BOUGHT the Book of a bouquiniste 
At a crimson stall on the Quai Voltaire, 
The fourth, as you fianez from west to east, 

'Twixt the Pont Roj^al and the Pont des Sts. Peres, 
That iron-ringed Pont des Sts. Peres. 

The air was blurred with the pc^lar-down. 
For May was warm in the world again ; 

And all the peace of the panting town 

Was afloat o*er the filmy, phantom Seine, 
A-muse o'er the mystic Seine. 

I note the time and I mark the place. 

The holiest shrine on the earth to me. 
And the crippled vendor's patient face 

All lined with his life's Gethsemane, 
Seared with sorrow's Gethsemane. 

It lay, the Book (I can see it yet 

In a drowsing, misty, Maytime dream) 

In a box where a scrawling etiquette 
Demanded a paltry '' quinze centimes f* 
Three sous or quinze centimes. 

It was old tree-calf! It was tooling rare! 
So I fondled the Book in a fatuous way, — 
77 



78 THE BOOK 

For an absent, idle, idiot air 

Is the law of the Medes when you bouquinez. 
When you artfully bouquinez. 

I fondled the Book . . . and I let it fall: 
A white mist whirled in my beating brain 

Till I could not see the Book or the stall 
Or the sliding gauze of the gliding Seine, 
The silver, spectral Seine. 

I could only see on that whirling white, 
Like the wavering line of a prairie flame, 

All pulsing and throbbing with ghostly light, 
The hallowed Name of the Book, the Name, 
The sacrament of its Name! 

Then the mist rolled of? ... I shall never forget 
The surging back of the spectral stream, 

And the glowing stall with its etiquette 
That prayed for a paltry quinze centimes. 
Dear God ! — but quinze centimes! 

What next? — Who knows? — Yet I sometimes love 
To dream that a sylph (for it was not I) 

Removed the Book to the stall above 
Where the etiquette was absurdly high. 
Really egregiously high. 



THE BOOK 79 

And I beckoned that man with the patient face 

All lined with his life's Gethsemane; 
And there, to the witness of Time and Space 

And the Gods, he sold the Book to me. 
He sold the Book to me! 

Then home with the Book! . . . Ah, the glamour and 
glow 
Of that primal night, when I sat quite still 
And felt the tide of its wonder flow 
To the ultimate, tangled roots of will. 
The filament rootlets of will ; — 

Till I felt the sap of my being run 

With forest-force, and hour by hour 
My soul reached out to the wind and the sun 

Through bud to leaf, through leaf to flower, 
Perfumed, virginal flower; 

And at last, afloat like the poplar-down, 
I mixed with May and the world again, 

At-one with the peace of the panting town. 
And the vaporous veil of the mystic Seine, 
The pallid wraith of the Seine . , . 

You smile ? — I know it is rather droll 

That the Name of a Book should suffice to stir 



8o THE BOOK 

The soul (permit me to call it the soul!) 
Of a maudlin, mouldy bouquineur, 
A rhyme-ridden bouquineur. 

Yet behold ! — I live by that simple Name, 
And I swing its ray as a search-light swings, 

That silver finger of silent flame. 

On the wondering, wistful world of things, 
Of Men and Books and Things. 

(A parable? No! — ^for what care I 
And what care you for the grunting race 

That root in the old Circean sty 
Of the visual, verbal Commonplace, 
The vacuous Commonplace? 

The Poet ! — what right has his soul to mint 
The gold of art to a form you know? . . . 

Let him clutch the steel ! Let him clutch the flint ! 
And clash out the Spark that shall kindle the Glow 
And the God in the heart of the Glow. 

The Glow ! — it is all that you need to feel, 
The light of lights in our human dark; 

So watch the clash of the flint and steel. 
And catch in your soul the puny spark. 
The petulant, fugitive spark.) 



THE BOOK 8i 

So back to the Book — I shall grip it fast 
As the hunched grey years halt blindly by, 

Reading the Name to the very last, 
By the waning light of the Paris sky, 
That lurid, lamping sky. 

It shall mix with my dust in Pere la Chaise ; 

I shall clutch it close ; I shall guard it well ; 
For never an eye of the earth may gaze 

On the Name that never a man may tell, 
That only high God may tell ... 

Yet seek (why not?) on the Quai Voltaire 
When Spring is a-wing in the world again. 
And the poplar-down is afloat in the air. 

And visions move in the veil of the Seine, 
The film of the phantom Seine; 
For you never can say, when you bouquinez. 
What the eye of the mind may chance to find 

In the stalls by the haunted Seine: 
You may happen on Love in the box above. 
Or Art aglow in the box below. 
Or even Yourself in a dusty shelf. 

Yes, even Yourself, 
In the stalls by the haunted, haunting Seine, 

Yes, even Yourself, 

In the stalls by the mystic Seine. 



BY THE PONT NEUF 

I SAW it drawn out of the water; 
I saw it laid stark on the Quai, — 
The clay that was somebody's daughter, 
The Peace that is nobody's clay ... 

A tale in the foolish old fashion, 

Old when our Paris began, — 
The man that was play to his passion, 

The maid that was play to the man; 

And the old, cold darkness falling; 

And the kind, blind madness again ; 
And the Seine that was calling and calling; 

And the frenzy that answered the Seine; 

Then the leap from the lights ; — and a stray thing 
Spins through the spangled spray, — 

The clay that was somebody's plaything, 
The Peace that is nobody's clay. 

Dear God ! — we are riven asunder 
By the powers without and within. 

By the Sin that the heart calls Wonder, 
By the Shame that the soul calls Sin. 

And lo! she is purged and shriven, 
Sacramental and clean at a breath, 
82 



BY THE PONT NEUF 83 

In the death where hot life is forgiven, 

In the Life that wings Godward from death . . . 

Like the bread of the mass we are moulded, 
Like the wine of the mass we are trod, 

To be lifted, enchaliced, enfolded, 
The Host on the altar of God ... 

So cover that Eucharist ! — Cover 

That Grail that glowed red for a day, 

That clay that was somebody^s lover. 
That Peace that is nobody's clay! 



THE LUXEMBOURG GARDEN 

IT was the Queen's! ... A ghost that we know 
From the Rubens-room in the Louvre's great hall, 
All velvet a-riot and flesh aglow, 

Moves with her court by the palace wall; 
Jewels are flashing and laces fall 
In perfumed flow o'er the satin sheens 

And ladies shrill to the courtiers' drawl 
In the Garden that was the Queen's. 

Gone ! — and in place of the dame and beau 

Citizen babies kick and crawl, 
The big drum beats for the Guignol show. 

And the gaufres smoke in the vendor's stall ; 

The racket rings on the flying ball, 
And cache-cache whoops from the leafy screens, 

And young Republicans shout and brawl 
In the Garden that was the Queen's. 

Gone ! — and there's room for us all to grow ! — 

Room on the bench where the students sprawl ; 
Room in the plats where the roses blow; 

Room in the shade of the poplars tall ; 

Room for the dreamers, great and small, 
And the artist paints and the reader gleans, 

And peaceful poets mutter and scrawl 
In the Garden that was the Queen's, 



THE LUXEMBOURG GARDEN 85 

Gone! — the ruff and the furbelow! 

Gone, let us hope, beyond recall . . . 
But the nounous ribbons flame and flow; 

And Mimi flaunts in a rainbow shawl; 

And the color-love of the laughing Gaul 
In mad parterres in the maze of greens 

Flares and flashes and cannot pall 
In the Garden that was the Queen's. 

The earth was the lord's (in a sense, I trow) ; 

But fear has darkened the tent of Saul; 
The sceptre yields to the wielded hoe, 

The jeweled hilt to the mason's maul — 

So Prince! make room for the ancient thrall! 
And Satin! make room for the velveteens! 

For the Right Divine is the right of all 
In the Garden that was the Queen's! 



THE LUXEMBOURG SPARROW 

HERE in my Garden, my Parisian 
Vision, 
My Luxembourg, your khaki cohorts come, 
All mirth and mettle to the marrow, 

Sparrow, 
Claiming the tributary morning crumb. 

A bargain ! — while you snatch your viand, 

Try and 
Assist a most inconsequential bard 
To phrase the parasitic, dusty, 

Lusty, 
Ecstatic life that we should find so hard . . . 

I think you love! Dan Cupid, kindly. 

Blindly, 
Looses his shafts wherever life is found — 
I know you victims of his arrow. 

Sparrow, 
From evidential, fledgling facts around . . . 

You bear no burthen of the morrow: 

Sorrow 
Flits hawk-like by, a swift, fugacious pain, — 
Some feline shape, or famining snow, or 

Blow, or 
A shattered nest you lightly build again. 
86 



THE LUXEMBOURG SPARROW 87 

But we, we shrink from the hereafter; — 

Laughter, 
Such as we have, is salt with coming tears; 
And Fate's inexorable harrow, 

Sparrow, 
Prepares fresh pastures in our field of fears . . . 

You may be men whose souls inherit 

Merit 
Through selfless deed before this life began ; 
And hence, perchance, your strange, Buddhistic, 

Mystic, 
Attachment to the ways and walks of man. 

I like the thought ! — sweet incarnations ; 

Stations 
Between Nirvana and the wormy sod. 
Where thought's immense horizons narrow, 

Sparrow, 
To wings and wonder in fine airs of God ! . . . 

Wise in the best of socialisms. 

Isms 
And moral questions play no role with you, 
Nor do you seem to care a feather 

Whether 
You have a right to do the things you do . . . 



88 THE LUXEMBOURG SPARROW 

Here is the final crumb, O flagrant 

Vagrant ! 
And thank me thus : — when I am one with fame, 
Respect the laurels on my barrow, 

Sparrow ; 
Respect the stone that bears my deathless name ! 



CHIFFONS/ 

THROUGH this our city of delight, 
This Paris of our joy and play, 
This Paris perfumed, jeweled, bright, 
Rouged, powdered, amorous, — ennuye; 
Across our gilded Quartier, 
So fair to see, so frail au fond. 

Echoes — mon Dieu! — the Ragman's bray: 



rf, I i-'^iJ A' J ^ I 



Mar-chand d'ha ' bits! Chif - fons!'* 

Foul, hunched, a plague to dainty sight. 

He limps infect by park and quai. 
Voicing (for those that hear aright) 

His hunger-world, the dark Marais. 

Sexton of all we waste and fray. 
He bags at last pour tout de hon 

Our trappings rare, our braveries gay, 



rf. .1 r.'^i A-^ J ^ I 



Mar-chand d'ha - bits! Chif - fons! '» 

Their lot is ours! A grislier wight. 

The Ragman Time, takes day by day 
Our beauty's bloom, our manly might, 
89 



90 CHIFFONS/ 

Our joie de vivre, our gods of clay; 
Till torn and worn and soiled and gray 
Hot life rejects us — nom de noml — 
Rags ! — and our only requiem lay, 



^'i J J.-'^J 4\l' J S I 



"Mar-chand d^ ha - bits! Chif-fons!' 



ENVOY 

Princes take heed ! — for where are they, 

Valois, Navarre and Orleans? . . . 
Death drones the answer, far away. 



VILLANELLE OF THE COCHER 

^'HT^IENSr' said Number Five hundred and two,— 
A And the sabots clacked from the hub to the 

street — 
" Paris, perhaps, seems gay to you ? " 

Adapting my phrase to his point of view, 

I hinted that life had its bitter and sweet — 
'' Tiens!'' said Number Five hundred and two, 

" It is bigrement bon with nothing to do 

But fianer and jaw with the types you meet — 
Paris, perhaps, seems gay to you/* 

I spoke (what I like to believe is true) 

Of Noble Toil and of Things Concrete — 
'' TiensI " said Number Five hundred and two ; 

" Just wait at night in the taxi queue 

With the bise in your face and frozen feet — 
Paris, perhaps, seems gay to you! 

** Then home to the wife with quarante sous 

In pour-boires . . .'* (the rest I may not repeat) 
'' TiensI ** said Number Five hundred and two, 
*' Paris, perhaps, seems gay to you ! " 



91 



SONNETS 



THE LAPIDARY 

GREAT LAPIDARY, fix upon Thy mill 
This sordid earth! Wipe off the mould of green, 
The writhing life, vermicular, obscene, 
The slime of sea, the scurf of town and hill. 
Then grind, O Lapidary! Labour still; 
Polish the lifeless, primal granite clean. 
Till, mirrored true, shines from its heart serene 
The undistorted image of Thy will. 

And then? — Wouldst Thou Thyself be still the same? 
Would God be God if lacking even me? — 
Nay! Here I shout my challenge into space: 
Thou dar'st not lose, fronting Timers lonely face, 
One monad cell that thrills its life to Thee, 
One gem of love that sparkles back Thy flame! 



95 



BURROW AND WING 

TRACKS in the snow: the print of tiny feet, 
The timid questing of some woodland thing 
That scuds afield and ends its wandering 
In the shy darkness of its earth retreat . . . 
Tracks in the snow! See; strange and incomplete, 
These start a-sudden, tread in loop and ring, 
And end a-sudden — where a sk5rward wing 
Has left the ghost-mark of its parting beat. 

Love, we are man and woman. We must tread 
From life to life, perchance, this world below. 
Oh, may we, lighting softly from above, 
Seek here no burrows of the living dead, 

But wing to wing, when God shall bid us go. 
Float bird-like through the higher airs of love ! 



96 



THE WASTRELS 

WELCOME! — In through the portal of the eye 
God's revellers reel blindly . . . Welcome all! 
Welcome and wassail and what else may fall, 
Ye flaunting wastrels! Drunk with sea and sky, . 
Mad with the earth-glow, whirling from on high 
Sun-frenzied, — welcome! In our magic hall 
Art's red alembic fumes; and wizards call 
Strange ghosts from out its vapours . . . while ye die! 

But ah! the death ye die, flushed avatars 

Of love and flame, fading from dream to dream. 
Mixed with the haunted light ye loved so long. 
To melt at last in quintessential song. 
Song, where aeonian life shall glow and gleam, 
Life, surging Godward past great epic stars! 



97 



THE PHMDO 

^^TX 7E owe a cock to iEsculapius! " — 

▼ ^ The debt was sacred in the Master^s sight, 
His grand concession to an ancient rite; 

What though he knew, in speaking Crito thus, 

The god a myth, his cult idolatrous? 

He saw in myth and fable, dimly bright, 
The shattered glories of the Primal Light, 

And worshipped That, sublimely credulous. 

Pay thy least debt of worship! Soon or late 
The ship comes back from Delos; consecrate 
The narrow daylight hours thou hast to wait 

To radiant thoughts of immortality; 
Then, drinking deep the hemlock bruised by fate, 

Pour no libation to the darkening sky! 



98 



THE POLE 

THE centre of a web of phantom lines 
Spun by deft science on imagined charts ; 
The vagrant goal of ever-fixed designs ; 

A frozen nothing sought by fiery hearts; 
A North where all is South, and timeless Time 

Chills hot high noon and midnight into one; 
And old sky-monsters, ever circling, climb 

The severed zodiac of the slanting sun ; 
Where spectres dwell, pale Truth and purple Fame, 

Fame fogged with doubt. Truth frosted to a lie; 
Law to the wheeling stars, great nations' claim, 

Where never law can reach nor flag can fly — 
O glory-haloed mockery of frost! 
Earth's last Illusion — in the finding lost ! 



99 



THE LAST WORD 

WERE I a beast, blind to the boding morrow, 
Or closelier kin to God's high brotherhood, 
The blackest ill would leave no stain of sorrow. 

Or in alchemic wisdom turn to good; 
But now each day, a charnel house of errors. 

Of stinging evils and delights that cloy. 
Show far to-morrows thronged with horned terrors 

Leading wan phantoms of foretasted joy; 
And yet — since death to doubt were death to hoping, 

Since Love's large future holds fair promise still — 
I shun alike the beast's half-conscious groping, 

The fatal prescience of creative will. 
Not beast or God: mid-earth our pathway lies, 
Where he is wisest who is doubtful-wise. 



100 



BALLADES 



BALLADE OF THE BATHER 

MY bathtub does not change its size; 
My towels neither shrink nor break; 
The water keeps its normal guise ; 
The faucets keep their former make: 
Yet in my Eden crawls a snake! 
One single treasure wastes away; 

In suds and lather, flake by flake, 
My soap grows smaller day by day! 

" Behold! we eat and have our pies! 

With Clos Vougeot our thirst we slake! 
Our ointment is no bait for flies! 

And nothing wastes!" — Alas! I wake: 

It was a dream! — I lie and quake; 
My bath awaits; I may not stay. 

I scrub and shiver, plunge and shake: 
My soap grows smaller day by day! 

In vain the wisdom of the wise; 

In vain is labour's sweat and ache; 
In vain our Newcombs watch the skies; 

Our Pearys freeze, our Stanleys bake! 

The brave old earth, with bluff and fake, 
Flaunts these to hide her own decay; 

But to my heart these words she spake: 
" My soap grows smaller day by day ! *' 



IC3 



I04 BALLADE OF THE BATHER 

ENVOY 

O Prince of Printers! prithee take 
This verse, at half thy usual pay, 

That I may buy another cake : 

My soap grows smaller day by day! 



BALLADE OF NEOPHOBIA 

I'M cross as any patch 
When bathers come too thick: 
New pens that blot and catch; 
New gloves that tear and stick; 
New hose that cling and prick; 
New wool that scrapes and stings; 

New fashions, smart and chic; 
A plague on all new things! 

New candles, touched by match, 

Flare up with futile wick ; 
New towels chafe and scratch; 

New shoes give toes a crick; 

New soap, as square as brick. 
Our palms indents and wrings; 

New hobbies bolt and kick : 
A plague on all new things! 

New schemes that thinkers hatch 

Die like an early chick; 
New friends that lift my latch 

Are all too dull or quick; 

New critics carp and pick 
At every song one sings; 

New sweethearts tease and trick: 
A plague on all new things! 

IDS 



io6 BALLADE OF NEOPHOBIA 



ENVOY 

Prince Lucifer! Old Nick! 

Whose hand these changes rings, 
Thy whimsies make me sick: 

A plague on all new things! 



MIDSUMMER IN NEW YORK 

(1893) 

THE sky is splashed with the sluggish cloud 
And the pavements shimmer with heat — 
Come away from the reek of the panting crowd 
And the shuffle of languid feet; 
Come away and away to a cool retreat 
(It is not very far to flee) 

Where the souls of the sea and the city meet : 
Come over the ferry with me! 

Here South Street grumbles and frets aloud 
With the freight of the chafing fleet, 

With its mist of halyard and mast and shroud, 
With its bowsprits over the street — 
Come away ! for the hawser has slipped the cleat 

And our hulk is floating free. 

And the paddles begin to churn and beat, 

Come over the ferry with me! 

One city hides in its white steam shroud. 

And one in its gray mist sheet, 
And the spires of piety, rich and proud, 

With the towers of trade compete. 

And oh! but the smell of the air is sweet. 
And the sense of the soul of the sea, 

While the slap and the splash of the waves repeat, 
" Come over the ferry with me ! " 
107 



io8 MIDSUMMER IN NEW YORK 



ENVOY 

Princes! (That vocative sounds so neat; 

And a ballade ends so, you see) — 
Princes and beggars and all I greet: 

Come over the ferry with me! 



BALLADE OF THE RHYME 

LET us follow wherever the rhyme may lead : 
Weary of reason and prose am I ; 
And it^s O! for the smell of the foot-crushed weed, 
The sting of the rain and the rush of the sky, 
The swirl of the wind in the bending rye, 
The wild-rose flush of the matin prime, 

To wander, wherever the path may lie, 
In the whispered spell of the wizard rhyme. 

To the teeming haunts where the sons of need 

Swelter in sin for a time — and die; 
Where the old, bad plant sows the old, bad seed. 

While the world laughs on and the God goes by ; 

Where the starved child hushes its hunger-cry 
With the opiate breath of the flower of crime. 

We are led, alas! with a tear and a sigh. 
In the whispered spell of the wizard rhyme. 

Then whither away? Where the rolling mead 

Slopes green to the edge of the lake hard by. 
Ah, whither away? To the nodding reed, 

And the waves that laugh and the gleams that fly ; 

Where lovers are drifting, who softly ply 
The languid oar in a sleepy clime ; 

Soul linked to soul in the golden tie 
In the whispered spell of the wizard rhyme. 

109 



no BALLADE OF THE RHYME 



ENVOY 

Lords of our verses; make reply! 

Are your fancies quaint and your thoughts sublime 
Not found (at times when the muse is shy) 

In the whispered spell of the wizard rhyme? 



THE WANDERING JEW 

4^/^UTCAST from God?'*— I scarce can say: 
^^ I am the common human pest, 

A clot of tingling, glowing clay, 
A thrall to lusty lifers behest, 
Tongue-stained by many a godless jest. 

Heart-rotted, swinish, base, obscene, 
While vermin sins my soul infest 

Beneath my gabardine. 

But I am more! A sunset ray 

Blown from the rose-world of the west, 
A greening spray, or the throbbing lay 

That a wood-bird sings o*er his woven nest, 

All whisper, beckon, hint, suggest 
A coming peace, a hope serene. 

That cleansed and blest my heart shall rest 
Beneath my gabardine. 

Yea, I am more! Sin reels away 

As from an inn a drunken guest; 
And free from passion's satyr sway 

My soul pursues its endless quest. 

Till Love's own self is manifest 
In sun and song and shimmering green, 

And angel thoughts His will attest 
Beneath my gabardine. 



Ill 



112 THE WANDERING JEW 



ENVOY 

The type of man! I stand confessed 
Besoiled of soul, of lips unclean, 

With God's own heart within this breast 
Beneath my gabardine! 



ENVOY 
PATER NOSTER 

OUR FATHER, build Thy heaven in my heart 
And sweetly make my will Thy will therein. 
Shine through Thy Veil of Names! Dwell not apart, 
Our Father; build Thy heaven in my heart! 
Feed me that Bread of Love whose life Thou art ; 

And, clean and free from stain and fear of sin, 
Our Father, build Thy heaven in my heart 
And sweetly make my will Thy will therein. 



THE END 



"3 



